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Monday, May 7, 2012

The Paper Girls Challenge #7

It's the first Monday of the month, so that means....yay!....another Challenge from The Paper Girls!

I cannot believe that we're already at the seventh one! I am still so blown away by how our little community is growing over at PGCB, it's wonderful to see!

This time around we have a sketch challenge that was put together by Charity. Make sure to check out her post on The Paper Girls Challenge Blog today, she has created some really gorgeous layouts using this sketch that she created:

I combined my layout this week with both Charity's Sketch as well as with a NSD Crop Challenge for ScrapbookSteals. One of their challenges by Kristy Lee was a "Turn Back Time" Challenge, to scrap photos of yourself before the age of 25.

I pulled my old photo albums off the shelf the other day and went through some shots from high school. I found some photos from a farewell party that we had at the end of our Senior Year and thought they would be perfect to scrap....

Throughout my last few years of primary school I was bullied, teased and picked on quite a bit. I would hide in the library at recess so as not to have to go outside to play. I'd stay behind after school so that I could walk home alone. My "friends" were cruel, and from day to day I'd leave home wondering if today would be an ok day or a disaster. My self esteem and self confidence had been trampled and my debilitating shyness prevented me from learning to stand up for myself or make new friends easily.

Towards the end of Grade 7 my parents enrolled me in Drama classes in the hopes to introduce me to some different people, and to build my self esteem back up again. As shy as I was and as nervous as I was, it was incredible to finally feel accepted! I'd never been interested in drama before, but once I was involved I was hooked. I found others, who like me, were quirky in our little ways. Although we were a combination of introverted and extroverted individuals, we all were very similar and would thrive when on the stage. In a sense I had found my home.

The friends I made through drama changed my life for the better. From being bullied, to now having people who liked me for me without criticism or judgement was more than I could ever ask for and it could not have come at a better time. Right before High School. I found a core group of friends and throughout high school we were all virtually inseparable. We didn't all meet in drama, but those classes gave me the confidence to finally break out of my shell and make new friends who to this day mean the absolute world to me.

When it came time to part ways, it was the end of the summer after our senior year. We were all heading in different directions and to different cities. Some of us were heading to college and univeristy and others were about to start travelling the globe. In a sense this get together was to be our last one while we were all still at home. I wanted to capture that in a layout.

For nearly seven years Drama was my artistic outlet and since then I have found Scrapbooking, so it was cool for me to be able to incorporate both of them. For this layout I used Basic Grey's Obscure collection, which seemed fitting as the group of us were pretty 'obscure' from time to time lol, we weren't afraid to be goofy or act crazy!

This post is long and goes on, but I've been wanting to write something for awhile to say how wonderfully important these people are to me. They are my family and they pulled me up and out of the biggest slump that any child can go through, whether they know it or not they saved me and helped shaped who I was to become as an adult. Now into our adulthood, although we are not able to see each other as often, we still do get together a couple times a year and it's fantastic that I still have these dear friends in my life today. Love you guys and Thank you! XXX